I’ll bet if you debug, you’ll see that the entire stage is null at that point in the program. Stage will not be active until after the applicationComplete event is fired. Try something like this:
<code>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml” applicationComplete=”init()”>
<mx:Script>
private function init():void
{
stage.stageFocusRect = false;
}
</mx:Script>
</code>

That should solve this problem and a whole lot of others. Lemme know if that helps